| Legal Question (interpret the meaning and application of a law) [1908] Legality of Ejections for Conduct Violations |
(04-02-2019, 06:00 PM)Nat Wrote:(04-01-2019, 09:38 AM)sandaoguo Wrote: It’s not true that “there is no written guideline which stipulates that action by NationStates moderators is sufficient proof of a conduct violation.” The Criminal Code *is* the guideline. The only people who decide when someone has broken NS rules are NS mods. If they have not made a decision, then the rules haven't been broken yet. (The same way we can't say someone is guilty of breaking our own laws, until the Court has delivered a verdict.) It's pretty simple. We do not need to have a side document explaining that. (04-03-2019, 03:37 PM)sandaoguo Wrote: The only people who decide when someone has broken NS rules are NS mods. If they have not made a decision, then the rules haven't been broken yet. (The same way we can't say someone is guilty of breaking our own laws, until the Court has delivered a verdict.) It's pretty simple. We do not need to have a side document explaining that. My initial brief argued that this region's case law requires that we have a side document explaining this. While it is best to read the Consistency with the Charter's values section in my brief, here is a summary: In HCRR1801 the Court found that the Local Council must "provide certain written guidelines, and establish a certain written procedure, for how Article 3 of the Border Control Act will be implemented." My brief contests that the reasoning of the Court is applicable to this case and so, therefore, written guidelines and procedures need to be provided. Your argument about the obviousness of NS moderation = NS rule-breaking does not refute the conclusion that case law requires written guidelines and procedures.
Former Associate Justice of the High Court of the South Pacific (4 December 2019 to 5 February 2021)
@Nat
I would warn against side documents because that’ll clutter the current legislation and can open the door for more misunderstanding and conflicts. It’s better to edit the law to say what you actually want it to say.
For Immediate Release
July 31st, 2020 The Court provides notice to the general public that the verdict on HCLQ1980: Legality of Ejections for Conduct Violations will be released on August 1st around 13:00 GMT (09:00 EST). The Court will thereafter entertain questions and doubts regarding the legal reasoning expressed in its verdict, and the process it followed in the consideration of the review request, but it will not consider questions regarding the political ramifications of the same, nor will it express opinions of a political nature on any other unrelated subject. The Court would also like to apologize for the long delay in producing a ruling. -Griffindor/Ebonhand
-Current Roles/Positions -Legislator 2/24/20- -High Court Justice 6/7/20- -South Pacific Coral Guard 11/17/20- -Minister of Engagement 6/17/22- -Past Roles/Positions -Legislator 7/3/16-4/10/18 -Secretary of State 4/3/20-2/24/21 -Chair of the APC 9/24/16-5/31/17 -Vice-Chair of the APC 6/1/17-4/10/18 -Local Council Member 7/1/17-11/17/17 -Citizen 5/2012-12/2014 and 2/26/16-7/3/2016
High Court of the South Pacific
HCLQ1908: Legality of Ejections for Conduct Violations
A question on the constitutionality of Article 2, Section 2 of the Criminal Code.
Petitioner:
Date of Submission:
Date of Justiciability:
Date of Opinion:
Legal Question(s):
Amicus Curiae Briefs:
Summary of the Ruling:
It is the opinion of the Court that Article 2, Section 2, of the Criminal Code, which lists the sentence for committing a conduct violation, does not inherently contradict Article III, Section 3, of the Charter (the guarantee of due process), and is this deemed lawful. The Court further finds that the right to due process is similarly not infringed so long as the precedent established by HCRR1801: Review of the Ban on Malayan Singapura is followed; the precedent being that there are officially written and publicly posted rules and guidelines that detail how judging a conduct violation should proceed. If these requirements are met, the portion of the law under question remains valid. Justice Griffindor delivered the opinion, signed also by Chief Justice Kringle.
On the question of whether Article 2, Section 2 of the Criminal Code contradicts Article III, Section 3 of the Charter, it is the opinion of the Court that there is no inherent contradiction and, therefore that Article 2, Section 2 of the Criminal Code is lawful. This decision is reached based on an analysis of the laws in question, namely the Criminal Code and the Charter, in addition to past rulings of the Court and other relevant information. The Court first looks at the text of Article III, Section 3 of the Charter, which states that “no member, who had joined the region in good faith, may be banned or ejected from the in-game region without the due process of law.”[1] Upon a surface reading of that section, it would seem that every member of the South Pacific would be entitled to a full trial before being removed from the region. However, the inclusion of two terms, “good faith” and “due process“, brought a new question for the Court to consider: What do good faith and due process mean? The Court will first start with “What is good faith?”. Good faith could mean many things to many different people. Luckily, the Court had already defined what good faith means in HCLQ1708: Members of the Coalition. The Court described good faith (more specifically how not to be covered under the blanket assumption of good faith) as follows: “the intent was to exclude certain users, whose intent is exclusively or primarily to violate the legal order, from being considered members, and therefore acceding to the protections of Article 3.”[2]. In short, every member of the South Pacific is entitled to a blanket assumption of good faith protections unless the member has a history of not acting in good faith, or is clearly not intending to follow the rules. Moving from determining what good faith is, the Court asks its next question: “What is due process?”. The Court will first look at Article 2, Section 2 of the Criminal Code, which states that “conduct violations are punishable by immediate ejection and banishment from the region.”[3]. In a regular surface reading of this particular section, and while reading this section only, this part of the act would indeed be unlawful as there is no mechanism for which the accused party to dispute any potential conduct violation before or after the ejection happens. Article 2, Section 2, goes further, however, and finishes the sentence with this: “albeit punished parties may appeal this decision to the High Court.”[4]. This second part of the sentence is part of what gives this section its lawful nature. The inclusion of this last part of the sentence, as well as the next sentence in the section (“In most cases, nations that appeal the decision and apologize should expect to have their ban lifted.”)[5], provides a mechanism and process in which someone who has committed a conduct violation has the means to defend themselves and regain admittance to the community. The Court would also note that the bar to remove the ejection and banishment is very low, with an apology usually being the only thing required for the transgression to be forgotten and forgiven. This low bar provides ample opportunity for an ejected nation to rejoin the community over a lapse in judgment in what constituted a conduct violation in that instance. Due process in relation to enforcing the Criminal Code can be broken down into two parts, which can work together or separate from one another: due process observed before the judgment and due process observed after the judgment. For example, a member of the region who has committed a conduct violation on the RMB can observe due process with a moderator of the RMB informing the player that they have committed a conduct violation, and show them the official rule that they broke as proof. Should the conduct violation be severe enough, said player would be ejected and banned (or not, and the infraction committed treated as a warning), thus observing due process on the front end. The due process that could be observed after the ejection or banishment of the member who committed the conduct violation is optionally taken up by the High Court, and as explained earlier, allows for the user to regain admittance to the community. Due process in either or both of these ways should also follow the precedent set in HCRR1801: Review of the Ban on Malayan Singapura. In looking back to the opinion of HCRR1801, part C of the ruling detailed that the reason why Malayan Singapura’s ban was overturned was due to a lack of observed due process in the form of a lack of officially written and publicly available rules by which they would need to follow. The second part of part C of the ruling recommended that there be a standard set of guidelines by which to guide the process for proper punishments for rule-breaking.[6]. Now that the Court has established what good faith and due process mean in the context of the Criminal Code, and resurfaced the opinion found in Part C of HCRR1801, the Court must now determine whether the Local Council adopted these two recommendations,(officially written and publicly available rules, and publicly written and available guidelines on judging conduct violations) and whether or not the penalty for Conduct Violations is indeed lawful. The Court first looked for the presence of officially written and publicly available rules to aid a member of the region in following the rules of the region and of the wider game. The Court, through a basic investigation on the RMB, found that the latest publication of official rules of “RMB Etiquette”[7] was published at the beginning of June 2020, which is a direct successor to their last rule set published in April of 2019. The Court did not readily find official guidelines before that but can assume that the Local Council produced some sort of official guidelines following the conclusion of HCRR1801. If it turns out that there was no written and publically available guideline at the onset of this case in March of 2019 then any border control actions taken before the last known and officially written publically available rules in April of 2019 were unlawful and would violate Article III, Section 3 of the Charter. However, as this ruling is made in August of 2020, any border control actions that were undertaken since then, which were enforcing the officially written, and publically available rules, are valid, unless a case was brought to this Court and the ejection and banishment were subsequently overturned. It is worth noting that the definition of “conduct violations” is described in Article 1, Section 13, as “breaking in-game NationStates rules.”[8]. Upon looking at the rules posted by the moderation and administration team of NationStates[9], it is clear that some of the “RMB Etiquette” rules are derived from the NationStates rules, and are given a region-specific adaptation. This adaptation of the rules also serves to bring the official NationStates rules closer to the individual user who would have instead needed to navigate the forums of NationStates for the official rules rather than conveniently finding those rules posted on the World Factbook Entry. In light of these factors, the Court deems the officially written and publicly available “RMB Etiquette” rules, specifically those, and only those rules that were sourced from, and found directly in the NationStates rules sufficient to judge a conduct violation, in coordination with the official NationStates rules. Any other of the “RMB Etiquette” rules that do not find their direct counterpart in the NationStates rules would not find themselves as conduct violations, and as such, are subject to the standard moderation policy of the RMB. The Court next looks for the presence of officially written and publicly available guidelines on the enforcement of its moderation policy to ensure that the enforcement of said rules are uniform and not unfairly applied to the many members. In once again mentioning Part C of the opinion of HCRR1801, the Court recommended that in addition to the adding of the official rules (which were mentioned in the last few paragraphs), there should also be an official guideline to uniformly process the breaking of RMB rules, as well as any conduct violations. Through a basic investigation of the RMB, the Court saw no published guidelines on how to process and handle conduct violations and other rule-breaking. However, the Court did find on the “RMB Etiquette” dispatch a spot where the Local Council eventually intended to publish their guidelines on how to process conduct violations and rule-breaking uniformly[10]. Until such time as officially written and publicly available guidelines are unveiled, any ejections and banishments from the region are technically unlawful since there is no due process available to a member of the region before an action is taken against them, other than an arbitrary action taken by a relevant moderation authority. As the Court nears the end of its opinion, we now go back to the original questions that the case answers. Regarding the legal question that Article 2, Section 2 of the Criminal Code is in conflict with Article III, Section 3 of the Charter, the Court finds that it is not, if and only if the two criteria are met. First, there must be officially written and publicly available rules, and second, there must be officially written and publicly available guidelines to consistently judge conduct violations. In following the second question on if Article 2, Section 2, violates due process, the Court finds the issue already answered over the course of this opinion, so long as the test in part C of HCRR1801 is fulfilled, the right to due process would not be violated. As such, the right due process is not being violated. As stated before, if Article 2, Section 2, of the Criminal Code did not provide the ejected and banished an opportunity to appeal the decision to the High Court, it would have been unlawful and violated the right to due process as well. It is so ordered.
Citations:
[1]: Charter of the South Pacific; Article III, Section 3 (2020) The MATT DUCK Law Archive [2]: [HCLQ1708] Members of the Coalition (2017) Retrieved from https://tspforums.xyz/thread-5411-post-1...#pid160302 [3]: Criminal Code; Article 2, Section 2 (2020) The MATT-DUCK Law Archive [4]: Criminal Code; Article 2, Section 2 (2020) The MATT-DUCK Law Archive [5]: Criminal Code; Article 2, Section 2 (2020) The MATT-DUCK Law Archive [6]: [HCRR1801]: Appeal to the Ban Malayan Singapura (2018) Retrieved from https://tspforums.xyz/thread-5869-post-1...#pid169151 [7]: RMB Rules and Etiquette (2020). Retrieved from https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1381878 [8]: Criminal Code; Article 1, Section 13 (2020) The MATT-DUCK Law Archive [9]: The One Stop Rules Shop (2020). Retrieved from https://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic...6&t=260044 [10]: RMB Rules and Etiquette (2020). Retrieved from https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=1381878 -Griffindor/Ebonhand
-Current Roles/Positions -Legislator 2/24/20- -High Court Justice 6/7/20- -South Pacific Coral Guard 11/17/20- -Minister of Engagement 6/17/22- -Past Roles/Positions -Legislator 7/3/16-4/10/18 -Secretary of State 4/3/20-2/24/21 -Chair of the APC 9/24/16-5/31/17 -Vice-Chair of the APC 6/1/17-4/10/18 -Local Council Member 7/1/17-11/17/17 -Citizen 5/2012-12/2014 and 2/26/16-7/3/2016 |
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